Chugach Electric buys power from Fire Island wind farm

By Alan Bailey | Petroleum News: After a year, Chugach Electric Association has purchased about 50,000 megawatt hours of electricity from Cook Inlet Region Inc.’s wind farm on Fire Island, off Anchorage, the utility told the Regulatory Commission of Alaska on Jan. 30.

The wind farm started outputting power at the end of August 2012, though formal commercial operation did not start until Dec. 31. According to Chugach data, power output from the farm peaked in January 2013, when the utility purchased 6,880 megawatts of electricity. The lowest monthly power purchase was 2,213 megawatt hours in July 2013.

On average, the wind farm generated about 30 percent of its theoretical maximum power output, Chugach said.

Chugach Electric said it declined to use 4,799 megawatt hours of the power purchased in 2013. Curtailment of power from the wind farm mainly occurred from an outage of the power transmission line that connects hydroelectric power on the Kenai Peninsula to Anchorage, Chugach said.